


Stowaway

by AJHall



Category: Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-25
Updated: 2011-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sailing through the Pentland Firth in fog, Nicola realises this is no longer a single-handed voyage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stowaway

The boat nosed across the oily sea. The _haar_ had thickened: the forestay, not thirty feet away, was a faint dotted line.

The foghorn to port sounded again: Nicola counted carefully. Pentland Skerries.

Was she far enough south to risk her course change yet?

Stroma's two sharp blasts came suddenly out of the swirling grey, loud, and dead ahead.

She lashed the tiller in place and scrambled forrard. Away from the petrol reek of the engine the moist green exhalation off the land was unmistakeable.

Decision made, then.

Nicola turned - and looked into the grinning face of nightmare: impossible, hateful, familiar.

 _As if she saw jokes and had secrets no-one else knew._

The Thing with Marie Dobson's face advanced to the mast, spreading its arms to bar Nicola's passage to the tiller. Terror, with a primeval weight of its own, pressed Nicola to the deck. The boat's motion was changing; there was breaking water ahead. But no power on earth could drive Nicola past that unclean horror: better to take one's chances in the cold sea. She felt the little ship turn through ninety degrees, and clung to the edge of the fore-hatch cover, preparing for the crash.

It never came.

The boat steadied onto its new course and, abruptly, shot out of the fog bank into bright sunlight. Nicola was alone on board once more.

Duncansby Head was down away to starboard; on this heading she would clear it comfortably.

Shaking uncontrollably she moved aft to take the tiller again and found there was no need: it was lashed in position with a seamanlike hitch Nicola knew she had not tied. Her nostrils caught a faint whiff of mingled pipe tobacco and brandy, and on the edge of hearing there came, for a moment, a snatch of song.

 _Injuns on the warpath -_

Out of a churning mass of half-formed thoughts one crystallised and she clung to it, finding it oddly comforting:

 _He steered my boat better than I steered his._


End file.
